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Monday, January 31, 2011

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The Palestine Monetary Authority will in the coming months set the framework for issuing a new currency, a Palestinian Authority official said Saturday.

“This year will be one of deciding on the monetary regime for the Palestinian state,” Ramallah Gov. Jihad Al-Wazir told Bloomberg news.

Before the Palestine Pound can be issued, a fully independent central bank must be established and the financial system needs to be strong enough to maintain its own currency, Al-Wazir was quoted as saying.

“Dollarisation is one option, as well as a fixed-exchange peg or an exchange-control regime,” he said.

“From a pure economic perspective if you ask us, considering the structure of trade, a peg to the shekel is the most obvious choice, but that is a political issue,” he noted, according to the report.

“We want to make sure, and I am confident we will, that once we cross the line into statehood the Palestinian economy and institutions that have been developed will be able to insure that this will be a robust economy.”

The Palestine Pound has not been used since 1948, the year Israel was established.

The racialists of programs within the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education are undermining the idea that people should be treated as individuals instead of representatives of their race.

Real scientists, as opposed to some "social" scientists, understand that racial differences are insignificant. There are often more genetic similarities among people of different races than those within the same racial group. Racism is the result of learned behaviour based on cultural and ideological prejudice rather than supposedly meaningful differences in human physiological characteristics.

For most of the 20th century and all the 21st, civilized societies have been trying to move away from the backwards-thinking of categorization by race. Martin Luther King Jr's dream that his "children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" is, for much of the western world, no longer just a hope but a reality. Those who categorize people primarily by race within our culture have been largely ostracized and ridiculed.

Racialists may differ in their ideas of "racial superiority", yet despite the overwhelming scientific and societal rejection of their theories, there are still bigots who view "race" as the defining human characteristic.

This sometimes manifests in ideas within "critical race theory" such as that of "privileged races" who bear a collective guilt for such "privilege."

This ideology dehumanizes people as being representatives of their racial group, and so insists on quotas, rather than treating each man and woman as an individual.

One might think that an ideology that that promotes the concept that how you look is more important than who you are would be dismissed and held in contempt at institutions of higher learning. That is not the case at U of T's OISE, which has an entire program devoted to that belief and awards post-graduate degrees in it.

The graduates of that and similar programs in Canadian universities go on to teach and influence generations of students. One recent example of the type of thinking advanced by OISE is a new thesis produced there, saying that the objection by western feminists to the forced clitorectomies of Kenyan women is motivated by racism and "the pleasure of whiteness."

OISE's programs accept regressive ideas which propose, on the altar of cultural relativism, that barbaric primitive practices have equal merit to those of the post-Enlightenment west. Simultaneously, they are attempting to affirm that the color of your skin defines who you are. They look at everything through the prism of race, and produce a distorted image, such as that which condemns the effort to prevent female genital mutilation as being racially impelled.

OISE promotes these ideas with the help of your tax dollars. Whether OISE's race theories help or harm society and if they should be taught in Canadian universities are questions the public has a right to ask and maintains a strong interest in having answered.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

All it takes is a dictionary and half a brain to realize that "apartheid" is not a facet of Israel's political or cultural reality. Israel is a pluralistic, liberal democracy that does not deny enfranchisement to its non-Jewish citizens. It's a multi-racial country that has enacted no discriminatory laws based on race. The conflict with the Palestinians is a national conflict based on differing political, religious and territorial aspirations.

But the Marxist-Islamist alliance despises the idea of a liberal, capitalist, pro-western democracy in the middle east. Having failed to destroy Israel with terrorism, they are attempting to do it with PR through The Big Lie that Israel practices South African-style racism. University campuses are one of the main battlegrounds between the lies about Israel and the effort to portray the realities of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is part of the larger conflict between Israel and those of its neighbors who remain hostile to its existence. The Palestinian-Israeli quagmire is a complex issue, where both sides have legitimate grievance. A solution requires compromise and reason by all parties if progress is to be made. When the debate is hijacked by extremists, it makes the prospect of achieving peace even more difficult.

Speakers will include academics, feminists, analysts, and media personalities, including The National Post's Jonathan Kay. You might even find me hanging around the bar (they'd better have a bar or there's going to be one grumpy blogger at that conference!).

It's only $5 for students and you can find out more details through this link.

Finkelstein always identifies himself as a the child of holocaust survivors, as if it gave some particular credibility to his bigotry against Israel and his anti-Jewish comments. I guess that's another trend for this breed of fanatic.

He also has made a habit of comparing Israel, a pluralistic, liberal democratic country, to Nazi Germany.

Finkelstein, the "child of Holocaust survivors" who fancies himself an expert on middle east politics might want to take an undergrad course in 20th Century European history, because he either has no idea what Nazism is, or he is an idiot.

OTTAWA-GATINEAU, January 28, 2011 —The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today revoked the licence of CKLN-FM, a community-based campus radio station located at Ryerson University. The licence holder, CKLN Radio Inc., was found to have been in breach of numerous regulations and conditions of licence. It was unable to convince the Commission that it could operate the station in a compliant manner going forward.

“Holding a broadcasting licence is a privilege that comes with responsibilities and regulatory obligations,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C., Chairman of the CRTC. “CKLN Radio was given several warnings and opportunities to come into compliance. Each time, it demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to address our concerns. Taking away its licence is the only appropriate course of action in this case.”

The Commission began investigating CKLN-FM in July 2009 after receiving numerous complaints about the station’s governance structure, day-to-day management and operations, programming and ability to remain on air. At the time, the station experienced significant infighting and the volunteers, staff and management were locked out of the studio premises by the building manager. During the seven-month lockout, CKLN-FM broadcast an intermittent loop of programming without any ongoing community involvement or oversight by the licensee.

Once it resumed normal operations, CKLN Radio Inc. lacked any significant quality-control mechanism for its programming and there was little involvement from the Ryerson University student body despite its status as a campus radio station. It was also unable to meet some of the basic requirements of all licence holders, which include the submission of audible on-air tapes, program log and other records, and complete annual returns.

Today’s decision follows a proceeding that included a public hearing, which was held on December 8 and 9, 2010.

The fanatical anti-Israel group calling itself "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" (QuAIA) forced itself into last year's Toronto Pride Festival despite numerous objections towards the bigoted group's hijacking a Gay rights and pride event for their own political agenda.

Toronto's current mayor, Rob Ford, along with a number of city Councilors, called for defunding of Pride and many corporate sponsors withdrew support for the event as a consequence of the festival's allowing the hate group's participation.

In the aftermath of al-QuAIA placing its own interests ahead of the Gay community and badgering its way into Pride, Xtra, the Gay community newspaper, has just reported that last year was one "of the worst years in PT’s history is finishing with a $431,808 budget deficit in 2010. The rainy-day fund of $322,407 knocked it down to $109,409 in the red."

Xtra noted Pride Toronto board co-chair Francisco Alvarez's comments "PT budgeted for much more sponsorship than it received, somewhere around $50,000". He says the controversy surrounding Queers Against Israeli Apartheid and the “political messages” contributed to sponsors backing out at the last moment.

In what is considered more fallout from the controversy, Pride Toronto's executive director, Tracey Sandilands, submitted her resignation effective tomorrow.

All this shows that al-QuAIA, obsessed with their hate of Israel and self-interest, is prepared to harm the Gay community as a whole in their fanaticism.

In May of last year, Elham Dashtirahmatabadi, was found critically injured inside High Times — a book, Internet and drug paraphernalia store she owned with her husband at 187 King St. E. — by a police officer who was flagged down by two customers.

Her death from the injuries was ruled a homicide.

A suspect was arrested for this crime recently which, along with the murders of two other Iranian nationals, is attributed by Iran's state-controlled media as part of "a new wave of Islamophobia" in Canada.

First it was the Shark that Egyptians claimed was a Mossad agent eating people in the Red Sea.

Then came the Mossad Vulture. The Saudis arrested a vulture with a tracking collar as part of an avian migration study. The collar read "Tel Aviv University." Because as we all know, good spies wear collars identifying their country of origin.

Iran, never to be outdone in stupidity and paranoia by anyone, has just arrested 14 squirrels. Yup. You heard right. Squirrels.

"In recent weeks, intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran's borders," state-sponsored news agency IRNA reported. "The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services."

And these people are about to put a nuclear reactor online? News like this makes me wish John McCain had won the 2008 election.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The academic supervisor of the OISE Hate Thesis gave an interview to the radical leftist website rabble.ca that was published today. In it, Sheryl Nestel makes the predictable accusation that criticism of the paper that alleges a Jewish conspiracy to "obscure Jewish privilege, deny Jewish racism and promote the interests of the Israeli nation-state" is part of a larger "neo-con" conspiracy.

Ms Nestel told rabble:

"The National Postis Canada's premier neo-conservative newspaper and it's pretty clear that neo-con politics demand unconditional support of Israel as a key ally in the "Clash of Civilizations." I think the attack on OISE is simply an attack on progressive academia and on burgeoning student activism against Israeli human rights violations."

The larger issue that escapes Ms Nestel's analysis is the right of the public to be aware of and have input into issues that directly affect them.

One may legitimately ask, 'how does a radicalized program in some obscure area of study affect me?" The answer is: more than you may think.

The University of Toronto, of which the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education's Sociology and Equity Studies in Education is a part is, in large measure, publicly funded.

Its graduates go on to teach and influence generations of impressionable students in high schools and universities throughout Canada.

Universities are supposed to foster critical thought; the ability to hold, balance and reason among many competing ideas and ideologies. Sociology and Equity Studies in Education department at OISE appears to foster a very narrow approach to the acceptance of ideas.

Ms Nestel's mentoring, which is typical of the overall philosophy of her program, has recently produced theses which allege the collective accountability of Jews, a Jewish conspiracy to manipulate Holocaust education in order to allay Jewish racism, and most recently, one that alleges western feminists who oppose female circumcision are motivated by racism and genital obsession.

Is there no public interest in questioning whether Canadian students should be taught and influenced by teachers who advance those types of ideas? Or if we should be collectively funding a program that blindly accepts such assertions without providing alternatives from more mainstream perspectives?

In her interview, Ms Nestel stated:

The scholarship of all the students and faculty of the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies has been deemed to be tainted because much of it is seen as somehow less than "objective."

..The demonization of work that has contributed in innumerable ways to efforts to eliminate gender, racial and class inequality in Canada is ignorant and unconscionable.

While asserting her "academic freedom," to which she of course has a right, Ms Nestel ignores some other democratic principles. What of the right of the public as a whole to intellectual freedom? Is it "ignorant and unconscionable" for the public to express concern about how their children may be influenced and how public funds are being spent and to what end?

The failure to recognize those larger issues says a great deal about academic freedom and the level of intellectual discourse at OISE.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Male circumcision has proven health benefits. But it almost certainly causes some pain for the infant receiving it. It's really a six-of-one, half dozen of the other situation as to whether you have your male child circumcised. Circumcised males enjoy very, very, very happy sex lives without a thought to the long lost foreskin and its surrounding secretions. And I don't begrudge anyone their foreskin. May you and your children be covered in good health for all your lives.

Why am I even on this idiotic topic, you could rightly ask? Unless you're a urologist, what kind of person would waste so much time over something as unimportant as a foreskin?

There are a group of obsessed foreskin advocates who feel the need to swarm and harangue anyone who might publicly express the idea that male circumcision is not a major issue.

They have websites and they are on a mission. I believe they prefer the term "Intactivists" although, I think they could probably take ownership of the more popular term "dickhead" and they would have to spend less time explaining what they are all about.

And let me make this clear, I don't think they're dickheads because they are opposed to circumcision, they have every right to be and they have every right to advocate against it.

But as anyone who has been circumcised can attest, it does not interfere with the ability to have amazing orgasms. It is nothing like female circumcision, a euphemism for clitorectomy, which has no scientifically established health advantage and is solely for the purpose of reducing female sexual pleasure.

And if you spend all your time obsessing about foreskins and forming Foreskin Action Committees or whatever, it strikes me as not just a waste of time, but indicative of problems that transcend the physiological. These people give the term "special interest" a whole new meaning.

I will not be responding to any of the comments on this post, as tempted as I may be, so go ahead, have your say, because I already know this will rub some of you the wrong way.

The already tense relations between Israel and Turkey are about to get even more strained. Turkish TV stations and cinemas have began showing trailers of a violent, anti-Israel film focusing on a fictitious Turkish revenge campaign in response to the killing of nine flotilla activists by the IDF last May.

The film, "Valley of the Wolves – Palestine" will be released in January 28. It is being promoted as an anti-Zionist feature which is meant to raise awareness to "the Palestinians' terrible suffering" and shows Israel as a bloodthirsty regime. The $10 million production is the most expensive film ever made in Turkey.

The film's trailer shows a Turkish secret agent brutally murdering IDF soldiers in an attempt to take out the Israeli officer who planned the raid on the Marmara and oversaw it. Israelis are depicted as a nation of murderers seeking to build "greater Israel" on the bodies of Palestinians.

The film is the third is a series of features considered to be the Arab world's answer to "Rambo." The series is abundant in nationalistic-racist violent content and is directed against Turkey's enemies – The Kurds, Jews and Americans.

Rabble.ca is the radical neo-Marxist website funded by unions like CUPE and CUPW and by the NDP- linked Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It was founded by Judy Rebick and its current publisher is Kim Elliott, the spouse of NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies.

Rabble has a public discussion forum called babble, which is closely monitored and users are frequently banned for what they deem inappropriate comments. "Inappropriate" by their standards is anything that defends the Canadian Conservative Party,The United States of America, Israel or any other conventional institution or utters any criticism of unions.

What is considered appropriate, and is actively encouraged, are vicious attacks on the police. Shockingly, this even went so far as to insult the memory of Toronto Police Sergeant Ryan Russell on the day he was being mourned by most of the city in whose service he gave his life.

They include one from a regular rabble/babble contributor called "NoDiffrencePartyPooper" who claims, amid insulting the police as "Gestapo" and "fascist" that he regrets the death of Sergeant Ryan "as much as the next person."

Sure. If the "next person" is a rabble contributor or Charles Manson. But not if the next person is a decent human being.

You can read some of the even more disgusting comments they made below, with links. Included are those by a moderator called Maysie, who criticizes one person for writing positive things about the police and Sergeant Russell but has no problem with his being insulted on the day his family buried him.

"Here in Toronto, we have been immersed in a media celebration of everything good about our police, after one of them was killed. The coverage has been wall to wall, relentless and reverential. I have no doubt that this is partially intended to wash away the rather more distaff memories of the fascistic police palookas' gestapo tactics during the G20. I regret the officer's death as much as the next person but this story has been a good deal more prominent and profile than it would ordinarily be.. Police are the muscle and hired guns of the state, something the recent media coverage doesn't cover."

"it appears to me that a berserk person was rampaging through town in a stolen snow plough being chased by police, when an officer decided to end the situation by planting himself in the path of the snow plough. Do I have that right? And 10,000 cops have swarmed in Toronto to celebrate that inspired attempt at traffic control?"

From babble moderator Maysie: "Here on babble .. many of us have a negative view of the police, not only as armed agents of the state tasked with the legitimated use of violence and threat of violence against anyone they choose, but who are given special rights above the rest of us, whether at work or otherwise. ..The police will brutalize whoever they choose to, with relative impunity."

"In Toronto thousands of gang members are meeting to show solidarity with one of their own. This is the first fatality in that force in many years but they need to send a message to the population that they stand together against the rabble. In the meantime real workers suffer fatalities far more often than members of our privileged institutional gangs. Notice that the corporate bosses in Canada kill more workers than other comparable jurisdictions but the police will never protect us against those crimes. Workers are collateral damage in the corporate world. The police are holy warriors needed to control the population on behalf of those corporate murderers."

Monday, January 24, 2011

The man CTV has referred to as an economic terrorist in his own community, Amir Khadir, has produced a weaselly tome trying to explain his harassment of a store-owner in his legislative district. In doing so, Khadir demonstrates that he doesn't know what the word "apartheid" means and lacks the critical thinking ability to explain it in reference to Israel beyond, "because Tutu and Mandela and Jimmy Carter say so." He has overlooked the fact that Carter has since apologized for using the "apartheid" term in reference to Israel.

You may never have heard of Sheryl Nestel for anything she's written or said. But recently she has become infamous as the academic supervisor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the notorious Jenny Peto Hate Thesis and a similar one alleging collective Jewish guilt.

Now it appears Ms Nestel is going for the bizarro trifecta with a new Master's thesis she supervised that alleges "knowledge produced around female circumcision perpetuates discursive and material violence against Kenyan Maasai communities" and "this violence has persisted in neo/colonial eras as part of the white western feminist ‘care of self’ technique of displacing female abjection through the pleasure of whiteness." Its author also writes, "these western feminist constructions of sexual liberation rely on depicting racialized women as primitive and degenerate."

Are you following this so far? The thesis' author is saying that focusing attention on the practice of female circumcision is a way of perpetrating violence against Maasai communities that practice it. As far as I can make out, she's proposing that attention drawn to this issue is really because a bunch of western, liberal feminists are trying to feel good about themselves by making non-whites out to be primitive barbarians.

But it gets even better. Nestel's student doesn't just say that western, liberal feminists are racists, colonialists and cultural imperialists, but they also have a prurient obsession with genitalia! Or as the author of "KNOWLEDGE IS MADE FOR CUTTING: GENEALOGIES OF RACE AND GENDER IN FEMALE CIRCUMCISION DISCOURSE" puts it: "It is precisely through the preoccupation with genitalia and the ‘primitive’ practice of female circumcision that the ‘sexually liberated’ western feminist comes to know herself as a ‘civilized’ and viable subject."

The practice of female circumcision is nothing like male circumcision, which merely removes the foreskin, has hygienic advantages and does not interfere with sexual pleasure. Female circumcision is a clitorectomy (i.e. the complete removal of the clitoris). It's practiced by some tribal, patriarchal cultures for the purpose of removing a female's ability to experience sexual pleasure. The rationale for this brutality is that it will supposedly make a wife more likely to remain faithful to her husband.

In contrast to the Hate Thesis, "Knowledge is Made for Cutting" (despite the ill-advised pun in the title) is actually a well-written, well-researched thesis and its author certainly appears to meet the academic qualifications for her degree. But the bizarre conclusions reached under Ms Nestel's tutelage seem indicative of the fanatical, one-sided politicization occurring at OISE.

The University of Toronto's OISE presents odd notions of "oppression" to the extent of trivializing the word. To illustrate that point, one need look no further than the case of an OISE M.Ed. who claimed that by being ignored in a hardware store, she was a victim of "sexist oppression."

For most people, few things could be more accurately described as real sexist oppression than being forced to undergo a clitorectomy. But thanks to OISE's Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, we now know better. Western feminists should refrain from objecting to female genital mutilation and torture, lest they be accused of being lascivious, racist imperialists only intent on enjoying "the pleasure of whiteness." Alternately, they should probably consider sending themselves and their children to somewhere other than OISE's Department of Sociology and Equity Studies to get an education.

UPDATE: anyone wishing to comment on male circumcision is welcome to do so by clicking THIS LINK. I will be relocating all further comments on that subject left here to it. If you want to add to the comments on the subject this post is actually about, go ahead.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

ISTANBUL—The point man for the Obama administration's financial wars on Iran, North Korea and al Qaeda, Stuart Levey, has decided to leave his senior U.S. Treasury Department post at what is turning out to be a particularly critical time.

Mr. Levey's departure will leave President Barack Obama without the principal architect of Washington's economic-sanctions campaign against Tehran, just as that campaign is likely to be ramped up following the breakdown of talks among Iran, the U.S. and a bloc of global powers on Saturday.

The negotiations, held in Turkey, were aimed at curtailing Iran's nuclear program. With no date set for a resumption of the dialogue, American and European diplomats acknowledged here that they would likely need to put in place more of the economic penalties against Iran that Mr. Levey's office has been central to implementing over the past year. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, are vowing to increase pressure for more punishing sanctions.

In the weird world of quantum physics, two linked particles can share a single fate, even when they’re miles apart.

Now, two physicists have mathematically described how this spooky effect, called entanglement, could also bind particles across time.

If their proposal can be tested, it could help process information in quantum computers and test physicists’ basic understanding of the universe.

“You can send your quantum state into the future without traversing the middle time,” said quantum physicist S. Jay Olson of Australia’s University of Queensland, lead author of the new study.

In ordinary entanglement, two particles (usually electrons or photons) are so intimately bound that they share one quantum state — spin, momentum and a host of other variables — between them. One particle always “knows” what the other is doing. Make a measurement on one member of an entangled pair, and the other changes immediately.

Physicists have figured out how to use entanglement to encrypt messages in uncrackable codes and build ultrafast computers. Entanglement can also help transmit encyclopedias’ worth of information from one place to another using only a few atoms, a protocol called quantum teleportation.

In a new paper posted on the physics preprint website arXiv.org, Olson and Queensland colleague Timothy Ralph perform the math to show how these same tricks can send quantum messages not only from place to place, but from the past to the future.

read more about this fascinating article at Wired and the original paper upon which it was based at arXiv.org

(The same Kevin Barrett known for saying of such neo-conservative, pro-Zionist icons as Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman:

"If he convinces even one person to do something other than work for 9/11 truth, he may as well have personally murdered all 6 billion people on earth.”

“Amy, you will one day find yourself on the scaffold, condemned to hang alongside the other Goebbels-style traitors and mass-murder-coverup-conspirators from the corporate media you pretend to criticize....”)

Another of Blakeney's impeccable sources is Susan Lindauer, an American who was arrested as an Iraqi spy but was found by a US court to be mentally unfit to stand trial.

Aren't you glad your tax dollars are going to subsidize this guy's "research"?! Don't forget to congratulate the University of Lethbridge for being a world leader in academic buffoonery. It doesn't get much crazier than this:

Friday, January 21, 2011

Funnyman Seth Rogen was left stunned by a recent encounter with his moviemaking hero George Lucas - because the Star Wars director spent 20 minutes telling him the world would end in 2012.

Rogen was left speechless when Lucas and Steven Spielberg joined a movie meeting he was a part of - but the encounter has left him worried his life will be over next year.

He recalls, “George Lucas sits down and seriously proceeds to talk for around 25 minutes about how he thinks the world is gonna end in the year 2012, like, for real. He thinks it.

“He’s going on about the tectonic plates and all the time Spielberg is, like, rolling his eyes, like, ’My nerdy friend won’t shut up, I’m sorry...’

“I first thought he (Lucas) was joking... and then I totally realized he was serious and then I started thinking, ’If you’re George Lucas and you actually think the world is gonna end in a year, there’s no way you haven’t built a spaceship for yourself... So I asked him... ’Can I have a seat on it?’

“He claimed he didn’t have a spaceship, but there’s no doubt there’s a Millennium Falcon in a garage somewhere with a pilot just waiting to go... It’s gonna be him and Steven Spielberg and I’ll be blown up like the rest of us.”

"Girls Beware is a trilogy of tragedies brought about by teenage girls' attempts at independent behavior. Covers do's and don'ts in the babysitting situation. Develops the problem of the 'PICK UP' and the girls who go with boys that are too old."

One would think that when an entrepreneur and philanthropist donates $35 million dollars to a public university for the purpose of establishing a top caliber school of Global Affairs, there would be cheering from people ostensibly interested in improving education and enhancing the debate about international issues.

But at the University of Toronto, it appears there are some staff members and their acolytes who are deeply troubled at the prospect of students being given a well-rounded education that strays from their "approved doctrines."

Peter Munk is the founder of Barrick Gold is one of Toronto's foremost philanthropists. His $35 million dollar donation to the University of Toronto to establish the Munk School of Global Affairs was intended to give U of T a program that could rival those at Stanford and Oxford universities. The purpose is to facilitate the experience and knowledge of students who can think critically and enable to them to engage with a variety of ideas and perspectives in order to contribute to addressing compelling world issues.

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, as recent experience at U of T demonstrates, there are some academics at that institution who do not appear to be able to differentiate between critical thought and indoctrination. Their own views suggest that they are afraid that any thought that disputes their own should be suppressed and they object to Munk's donation to the university, ostensibly on the grounds that this is part of the "corporatization" of academia and that Munk may have "influence" on the curriculum.

To give an indication of Munk's commitment to the open exchange of ideas, you only need look as far as the Munk Debates series he sponsors.

The Munk Debates have brought together people of diametrically opposing views to provide public exchange of ideas in which people can balance proposals and engage in something OISE students aren't exposed to: critical thought. The debates have been on subjects such as The Canadian vs US health care systems, whether religion is a force for good, climate change, humanitarian aid and more. Participants have included people with such varied outlooks as Stephen Lewis, Christopher Hitchens, Charles Krauthammer, Mia Farrow, Tony Blair, John Bolton, Gareth Evans and so on.

At the Blair/Hitchens debate, I met some Munk School students and they were thoughtful, balanced, intelligent people who were open to a variety of ideas.

Which is exactly what seems to bother McQuaig and the opponents of the donation and the Munk School of Global Affairs. Under the guise of wanting "critical thought," they seemingly want students to be able to have one type of thought and to be critical of anything that digresses from it. That could be called many things, but "critical thought" it ain't.

There are a lot of things I could write to make fun of the ideologues opposed Munk's donation and to ideas that contradict theirs. But nothing does the job better than this piece of news: The Toronto Star's blogger, Antonia Zerbisias, who without explanation backed out of being a featured speaker at the mini-hate fest earlier this week, is going to enthusiastically attend a full day of anti-Munk protest this Saturday.

..Sometimes it feels that if there were no more Jews, or Israel (for the two are synonymous- Israel is the geographic embodiment of the nation) all of this would stop. Even some Jews feel that way. Many of us try to un-Jew ourselves all the time. It comes from a mixture of fear, guilt of surviving while others didn't, and embarrassment. We are the root of our and the World's problems, it seems. It is the Jews themselves that you will hear speak out most strongly against Israel. The instinct that drives them is the same instinct that drove them to blend in, and then be very surprised when they were put in the ghetto, too. The were surprised when they were put on the train, too. They were surprised when they were put in the gas chamber, too. They were surprised all the way till Death. Because "they weren't like those OTHER Jews"... Well. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.

And if anyone thinks that speaking out against Israel is anything other than thinly veiled anti-semitism, they are deeply mistaken.

"Maybe if i am quiet and at the back of the class and look down they won't notice." That should not be the motto of the World. Nor should "Maybe if I'm the loudest to condemn Israel, they'll remember me as a friend later." Because eventually, when there is only you left in the class, you will get noticed. We all will.

On the surface, it seems a rather dimwitted question to which the answer is rather obvious. Kay is a reporter and he is reporting about subjects who frequently, almost incessantly, self-identify as lesbians. In fact, one of the things neither Kay (nor I until now) reported about last night's evening of hate that rabble references, was Jenny Peto's bizarre claim that criticism of her looney tunes, academically inept anti-Jew/anti-Israel screed was based on "homophobia."

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

OISE Hate Thesis author Jenny Peto resurfaced last night at an anti-Israel event at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Well, not actually at OISE. It was originally scheduled to be there but was relocated at the last minute to a location a block away. One can speculate at the reasons, but the possibility that OISE is not entirely thrilled about the prospect of continued association with Ms Peto does seem a plausible explanation.

I was only able to attend the last hour of the event, but was there in time to hear all of Peto's speech and the question and answer period after, in which she referred to her brother as a "right-wing fanatical, racist, Zionist."

There were two things that Ms Peto's speech made me aware of. One was that I would be a rich man if I had ten dollars for every time she uttered the term "right-wing." The other is that the Hate Thesis polemicist seems to be chanelling another proponent of Jewish conspiracy theories.

Among the most famous uses of Canada's Hate Speech laws was the case of notorious Holocaust denier and Hitler-admirer, Ernst Zundel. A German-born landed immigrant who spent most of his life in Canada, Zundel was prosecuted, convicted and jailed in Canada and later Germany for publishing false claims that the Holocaust was exaggerated and part of a Jewish conspiracy to manipulate the non-Jewish world.

Take away the part about the Holocaust being exaggerated and the Hitler stuff but leave the rest and there is a striking similarity between Zundel and OISE Hate Thesis author Jenny Peto, who alleges a Jewish conspiracy to "obscure Jewish privilege, deny Jewish racism and promote the interests of the Israeli nation-state."

As Zundel faced his legal battles with Canada's judicial system and Human Rights tribunals, he put forward the free speech argument that his ideas were being suppressed because they were unpopular. Despite the falsehood of his allegations against Jews and his despicable motives, he had a point about free speech with which the Supreme Court of Canada eventually agreed.

Throughout the course of his campaign, Zundel astutely tried to frame the argument in terms of the right to free speech. He claimed he was articulating an opinion, and, though controversial, what right did a democratic government have to suppress it and jail him for its public expression?

OISE's Jenny Peto, in her tradition of spreading The Big Lie and twisting data (on those rare occasions she actually uses data) to reach bizarre, illogical conclusions, is now trying to frame criticism of her Hate Thesis in a similar context as Zundel cast his.

The convergence of Peto's and Zundel's respective writings reflects radical leftists' trend over the last dozen years of using language about Israel and Zionism which is virtually indistinguishable from that used by neo-Nazis. But in the matter of free speech, Ms Peto has, not for the first time, failed to piece relevant information together for a coherent argument.

The government of Canada, as well as others within the Jewish community were indeed trying to suppress and prevent the publication of Zundel's paranoid bigotry and made him a criminal in the process.

No one is trying to criminalize Ms Peto for what she said or to suppress her work. The situation is the exact opposite. Those who are concerned about the state of affairs at U of T's OISE are doing their utmost to publicize Ms. Peto's thesis in order to demonstrate the seriousness of the problem. While Ms Peto's hateful thesis, which lacked first-hand sources, showed inept scholarship, had factual errors, and substituted personal angst and opinion for fact was indeed the best example, in fact, the original article used by The National Post did not refer exclusively to Peto's thesis, but also included another to demonstrate the extent of the bias at OISE.

Jenny Peto is now trying to make her case one of Academic Freedom and is narcissistically framing the debate around her. That's bait-and-switch on her part. Peto has said that the controversy "is about who I am as a pro-Palestinian activist and what I have to say."

It isn't. The controversy really isn't about Jenny Peto at all. It's about a University of Toronto program that has become so overtly politicized that it accepts incompetent scholarship as long as it is critical of Israel and Zionism.

As Ms Peto basks in her notoriety and tries to mislead anyone who will listen into thinking criticism of her thesis is an attack on "academic freedom," people should remember what the issue really is about. There are plenty of theses in universities denouncing Israel's treatment of Palestinians. No responsible person is suggesting these papers cannot exist in academia.

The issue at hand, that Ms Peto wants people to forget, is that the controversy is about incompetent scholarship and bias masquerading as social justice and academic achievement at OISE. The principal culprit is not Ms Peto, but the instructors who gave academic imprimatur to her substandard work. The question that remains is, what is the University of Toronto planning to do about it?

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

In the aftermath of crazed killer Jared Loughner's murder of six people and wounding of many others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, there has been a rush to exploit the tragedy for political purposes.

Without any actual evidence that Loughner was influenced by or even listened to any of Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck's "right-wing rhetoric," Democrats leaped upon the opportunity to lay blame on their political and ideological opponents for the act of a mentally disturbed individual.

But the facts that we do know are that Palin, Beck, and Rush Limbaugh never had any direct contact with Loughner. They never told him, or anyone, to go out and commit acts of violence.

This brings to mind the people who try to lay blame for teen suicides on Heavy Metal bands that the perpetrators of their own deaths listen to. In those cases, some conservatives exploited an opportunity to attack something they disliked with absurd allegations. As one empirical study observed to discredit such contentions, " it seems more plausible that those angrier after listening to preferred music were individuals with some combination of personal characteristics and/or life situations that have resulted in a general proneness to feeling angry, and that these characteristics and situations are tied to reduced reasons for living."

Now the tables have turned and the left is engaging in the same absurd, expolitative hysteria. What Jared Loughner did was because of what was going on in the warped mind of Jared Loughner and not because of American political rhetoric.

In a case brought against Judas Priest following the suicide of two young men who listened to their music, the Heavy Metal band's lawyer said, ''the risk that ideas may cause undesirable behavior'' in a small and unstable segment of the population ''is a small price to pay for a free society.''

There is no proof that in the Loughner case it was the ideas espoused by Republicans that inspired his actions, just as there is no proof that music causes suicides. Even if there were, the principles of the First Amendment and that of personal responsibility should matter even more.

The Stuxnet computer worm that attacked computer systems in Iranian nuclear facilities last November has destroyed about 20% of Iran's nuclear centrifuges, according to The New York Times.

The Times speculates that the worm was devised by a joint US-Israeli intelligence program and, if reports are true, was one of the most advanced, ingenious spy devices ever used.

The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

In addition to delaying Iran's nuclear program, the worm may have created the seeds of a disaster that could devestate Iran if its mullah-controlled government continues to ferverently persue nuclear technology as a point of hubris.

Britain's The Telegraph reports that Russian scientists working in Iran's nuclear program have alerted the Kremlin that, in the wake of the damage, an "Iranian Chernobyl" will happen if they are forced to comply with Iran's deadline for completing the project.

Russian scientists working at the plant have become so concerned by Iran's apparent disregard for nuclear safety issues that they have lobbied the Kremlin directly to postpone activation until at least the end of the year, so that a proper assessment can be made of the damage caused to its computer operations by Stuxnet.

The Iranian government is bitterly opposed to any further delay, which it would regard as another blow to national pride on a project that is more than a decade behind schedule. While Western intelligence officials believe Iran's nuclear programme is aimed at producing nuclear weapons, Iran insists the project's goals are peaceful.

The Russian scientists' report to the Kremlin, a copy of which has been seen by The Daily Telegraph, concludes that, despite "performing simple, basic tests" on the Bushehr reactor, the Russian team "cannot guarantee safe activation of the reactor".

It also accuses the Iranian management team, which is under intense political pressure to stick to the deadline, of "not exhibiting the professional and moral responsibility" that is normally required. They accuse the Iranians of having "disregard for human life" and warn that Russia could find itself blamed for "another Chernobyl" if it allows Bushehr to go ahead.

"The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart."

Sunday, January 16, 2011

to investigate threats, analyze information and produce intelligence; it then reports to, and advises, the Government of Canada, so as to protect the country and its citizens. Key threats include terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, espionage, foreign interference and cyber-tampering affecting critical infrastructure.

Through its Security Screening Program, CSIS prevents non-Canadians who pose security concerns from entering Canada or receiving permanent resident status or citizenship; the Service also safeguards the confidential information of the Government of Canada from foreign governments and other entities that may present a risk.

However, countering terrorist violence is the top priority for CSIS. Terrorism, which has become a global phenomenon, is a very real threat to our national security. Terrorists and their supporters span countries, cultures, political systems and socio-economic backgrounds. They include both highly educated elites and more humble "foot soldiers." Followers are recruited from around the world, including our own country. CSIS strives to prevent terrorist acts from being planned in Canada, from occurring on Canadian territory and from affecting Canadian citizens and assets abroad.

The rights and freedoms we enjoy are far too often taken for granted in this country. There are those within Canada's borders who have very little respect for them and are working to undermine those rights.

There are very real threats to Canada posed by terrorists, and it would seem only reasonable and sane for any citizen who isn't a terror-supporter to want to help CSIS do their job.

Some people overestimate the government's ability to protect us. They can't be everywhere and know everything. For a democratic society to function effectively, citizens have to be engaged in government. Sometimes that means criticizing the government when they make mistakes and other times it means helping them to make informed decisions. The only way anyone can make an informed decision is if they have access to relevant information.

Because we live in a liberal democracy, with rule of law and respect for individual liberties, an agency like CSIS can only ask for citizens' cooperation. Canadians are within their rights to refuse to speak to them. But who would counsel against helping a government agency devoted to protecting the safety of this country's citizens?

Oh..of course.. The People's Commission Network!

The People's Commission Network, who possess a name that sounds borrowed from Pol Pot's Cambodia, is a working group of the Concordia University student-funded Quebec Public Interest Research Group at Concordia. The same people who are celebrating dead German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof.

Not only that, but The People's Commission Network has produced a video to provide you with everything Canadians need to know about non-cooperation with their government's Security Intelligence Service.

TUCSON, Ariz. — A Tucson mass shooting victim was taken into custody Saturday after yelling "you're dead" at a Tea Party spokesman during the taping of an ABC-TV town hall event hosted by Christianne Amanpour.

The Pima County Sheriff's Office said J. Eric Fuller, 63, was involuntarily committed to an undisclosed medical facility, NBC News reported. The Associated Press said he was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation. ...

KGUN reported that Fuller took exception to comments by Republican state Rep. Terri Proud and Tucson Tea Party spokesman Trent Humphries.

Fuller was in the front row and apparently became upset when Humphries suggested that any conversations about gun control should be delayed until all the dead were buried, KGUN reported.

The judgment was made in the case of a man who slapped and kicked his daughter and slapped his wife.

The wife suffered injuries to her lower lip and teeth, and the daughter had bruises on her right hand and right knee. The court ruled that the bruises were evidence that the father had abused his Sharia right.

According to Islamic law, a man has the "right to discipline" his wife and children, which can include beating them after he has exhausted two other options: admonition and then abstaining from sleeping with his wife.

Still, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that many of them have insinuated themselves into our educational system at the university level, and even in some high schools and use their position to influence impressionable, weak minds. Generally dishonest about their political goals and motives, they get most upset when they are exposed.

Marxism has always led to totalitarianism in governmental practice and some of Canada's radicals have made no secret of their anti-democratic, violent intentions.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, with China's Communist party committed to that country's traditional local interest, and with Cuba's Castro ailing and nearing death, Communism just doesn't get people concerned anymore. And while for the most part it shouldn't, that doesn't mean that it can be completely dismissed.

As far as threats to western civilization go these days, extremist Islam, which combines irrational fanaticism with bloodthirstiness, presents the greatest danger.

But fanaticism of all kinds that oppose liberal democracies represent a danger to the freedoms we enjoy.

And that's one of the reasons Israel does such a service to the civilized world. What cause unites moonbat socialists with hateful theocrats who want to kill apostates? There may be a passing issue, in that any time the west acts in the interests of itself and against totalitarianism in the middle east or third world, these two seemingly opposite ideologies converge.

But it's the matter of Israel where these ridiculous fanatics reveal their true nature. Unable to stomach the idea that a liberal democracy with a Jewish majority should be allowed to exist and defend itself from anti-democratic, violent, totalitarian enemies, they beclown themselves in their hysteria.

Sometimes it takes a bit of work to find ways of revealing how these radicals are indeed preposterous (ok, not so much work in the case of the 9-11 conspiracy nuts), but no one does all the work for you like the Israel-hating crazies. They make themselves look so utterly demented that it surpasses any possible parody.

These are people who have religious zealots who think homosexuals should be killed marching arm-in-arm with a group that calls itself "Queers against Israeli apartheid." How is it possible to make that look any more idiotic than it actually is?

Today's installment of our ongoing comedic adventure is provided by nutbar website rabble.ca, the neo-Marxist, union-financed mouthpiece for Canadian radicalism.

Rabble.ca has provided countless laughs to readers of this blog, so I am eternally grateful to Judy Rebick for having founded it.

Two Israel-haters, University of Western Ontario French Professor David Heap and Wendy Goldsmith, collaborated on a little paean to The Sea Hitler, the Canadian attempt to get a boat to break Israel's Gaza blockade.

I don't know if there's anything funny about Heap that I could write that isn't done better by his official University of Western Ontario faculty picture.

But it's Wendy Goldsmith, a London, Ontario social worker, who provides the clearest example of how it's really impossible to make these people look more foolish than they do on their own.

And she does it with a poem about her hatred for Israel that she wrote for rabble, an excerpt of which follows.

The poem is titled "in memory of the nine brave, courageous peace activists whose lives were stolen by murderous war criminals who spin lies, black out independent media, violate international law repeatedly! repeatedly! yes, this is for them...in memory of the nine brave, courageous peace activists who were murdered by Israeli soldiers, in the name of TRUTH."

Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies just sent out the following:

TORONTO – January 13, 2011: TORONTO – January 13, 2011: After careful investigation into rumours of a boycott of Israeli-based Ahava beauty products by the Hudson’s Bay Company, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) has discovered there is no boycott of Ahava or any other Israel-based products. This has been confirmed by both Ahava’s Israel office and its head office for North America in New York. It has further been directly confirmed by HBC’s President and CEO, Bonnie Brooks.

“We are very pleased to note that the Bay has come out strongly against the pressure to join an antisemitic boycott by a radical organization in Canada,” said Avi Benlolo, President and CEO of FSWC. “It is very important for community leaders to investigate matters of this nature diligently, rather than empower and give prominence to the Israel boycotters,” he explained.

The following statement on behalf of Bonnie Brooks, expected to be honoured by the Israel Cancer Research Fund later this year, was released today:

“The brand in question, Ahava, has been discontinued globally by the brand owner, not by The Bay. One of our largest shareholders of the Hudson's Bay Trading Company is one of North America's most significant Israel supporters, and our Governor along with our Chief Beauty Merchant responsible for this product range, are both Jewish. We do not discontinue products due to pressure from any source other than our own decision based on either sales performance or product quality,” Ms. Brooks said. “We are very concerned that we have received hundreds of emails and negative customer reaction inside our stores, all due to the spreading of incorrect information, which has upset our many customers, employees, their families and the fashion industry who are supportive of Israel. We would appreciate the parties involved in the protest, being set straight as soon as possible,” she added.

UPDATE FROM BNAI BRITH:

JEWISH CANADA UPDATE ON AHAVA AND THE BAY

Further to the Community Alert B'nai Brith Canada issued earlier this
week, and the contradictory explanations that have been given by
representatives of the Bay on the Ahava issue, B'nai Brith has followed
up with another letter which includes the following offer to the
company:

The Bay, which is among the retail outlets being targeted by a
coordinated anti-Israel campaign, appears to have underestimated the
sensitivity of the situation and the need for the corporation to express
one clearly enunciated position, with one consistent message, to its
customers and to the public. After receiving concerned calls from
individuals who witnessed products being removed while protests were
taking place, we took the precaution of checking with The Bay for an
explanation. A person who identified herself as a spokesperson insisted
that it was a "business decision" made by The Bay. The explanation you
have since circulated, which insists it was a decision by the
manufacturer/distributer, contradicts the explanation you are now
offering the public.

Regardless of the explanation behind The Bay's actions, The Bay has
failed to deal with the concerns of its customers in so far as it has
not issued a clear statement as any effective public relations strategy
would dictate. By offering contradictory explanations, the company has
to take responsibility for the confusion that has ensued. Regardless of
explanations offered, the fact that the removal of the Israeli-made
products coincides with the bigoted anti-Israel campaign has left
boycott propagandists with the public perception of a victory. For
example, Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, the
instigators of the boycott, and the Palestine Solidarity Network are now
publicly thanking The Bay for dropping Ahava products and removing the
products from its shelves. The Bay is already being held up by
anti-Israel agitators as an example of what a boycott campaign can
achieve.

As a way of helping you to clarify and rectify the situation, we are
prepared to offer you advertising space free of charge in the largest
Anglo-Jewish publication in Canada, the Jewish Tribune, so that you can
promote the Israeli-made products you carry. This will indicate that The
Bay firmly resists attempts to accede to the demands of boycott
campaigners.

Last week, after a regularly-scheduled review of the products it offers, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) discontinued sales of AHAVA beauty products, primarily because of sales results which had been declining for several years.

Although this decision was made by HBC solely for commercial reasons, it occurred at the same time as an aggressive campaign by several groups advocating a boycott of AHAVA products. At no point did political considerations enter into the exercise of HBC's business judgment. HBC has made it clear that it has not "bowed to political pressure" in the past, has not done so now and will not do so in the future. HBC neither subscribes to nor endorses politically-motivated boycotts of merchandise from countries with whom Canada has open and established trading relationships, including Israel.

AHAVA products will soon be reformulated and redesigned as a totally changed brand. The new AHAVA products will be ready by mid-spring and is planned to be re-launched at HBC stores across Canada. We encourage consumers across Canada to purchase those products as soon as they are available.